Lisa met her goal of losing 100 pounds by her 40th birthday, but the struggle continues. Click through to read about losing the first 100 pounds or click on the links below to read about the new challenges.

Lisa met her goal of losing 100 pounds by her 40th birthday, but the struggle continues. Click through to read about losing the first 100 pounds or click on the links below to read about the new challenges.

I tried writing in this space about a month ago and got three paragraphs into it before I gave up. I just feel like I'm saying the same things over and over and not making any real changes that stick. But all I can do is try again and keep trying until I get out of this rut.

Wow! I certainly didn't expect it to play out like this, but, hitting my big birthday weight loss goal sure came down to the wire! In case you didn't notice up there, I did lose (more than) 100 pounds by my birthday today!

Last week, I had resigned myself to very possibly not making it. I had accepted that 100 was an arbitrary number of pounds and, ultimately, my birthday was an arbitrary date, and if I didn't quite make it, I'd still come a very long way and accomplished a lot.

Then the scale kept going down this week and it seemed more and more likely. And when I weighed in officially this morning and was down 104 pounds I was ecstatic!! Seriously, this is the best day I've had in a very long time - knowing I set a big goal and stuck to it and hit it is a really amazing feeling.

But everybody keeps asking me (and I keep asking myself) "now what?" And I'm not quite sure how to answer.

I do know that I'm not done losing weight. I'm thrilled with how far I've come, but I'm not at my ultimate goal yet. Unfortunately, I also don't know what my ultimate goal is!

I spent so much time (18 months!) focused on this 100-pounds-by-my-40th goal that I didn't really spend a lot of time considering the next step.

I don't think I'm going to actually choose an ultimate goal. It's tricky because I've been overweight my entire adult life, so it's not like I have a weight I'm trying to get back to. And I don't want to fall into a trap where I pick a weight because it sounds good and then get so caught up in trying to reach it that I don't realize I'm fine at a different weight.

I think from this point on it makes more sense to focus on smaller 5- and 10- pound goals. And I have to keep in mind that when the weight loss slows down, it's okay to focus on maintaining for awhile - as I've come to realize in recent months, this process will be ongoing for me forever. I'll never be able to just eat whatever I want and not worry about it. So when it comes time to work on maintaining, that will be just as important and challenging as actively losing has been.

But for right now? I'm going to celebrate my birthday with my friends and family and I'm going to treat myself. There's pasta to eat and wine to drink and cake to savor. And I'm not going to drive myself crazy about my choices.

I've decided that I'm not going to weigh myself for two weeks - giving me one week to indulge and then one week to get myself back on track. And I am going to get back on track. Whatever that scale says in two weeks will be okay. And then I'll be excited to get right back to the business of moving forward with my goals (whatever I decide they are) and continuing to make healthy choices.

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